A guy who was a local handyman at RMA in 1984 is also now running his own school.
Was that Rainbow, by any chance?
(I never met him, just recall hearing his name when I got there initially.)
Then of course there was the night watchman guy who turned out to be a neo-nazi, and only came to work at the place so he could kidnap the jewish kids and hold them for ransom.
Actually I was referring to Richard Armstrong. When I arrived at RMA he was just some guy from Bonners Ferry who helped out around the place. Like Will Vernard, Joe Sweney and Lou (No memory of his last name but usually helped at the farm). Richard was called 'Rowdy" back then. In Summer of '84 he was not in many raps, just helped the Voyager crews at the Wood Corral, didn't participate much in anything. But I would say by Christmas of '84 he was suddenly a Number 3 man in Voyagers behind Bob Silfies and Caroline Wolfe. Now he runs his own troubled teen wilderness camp. And if you read about that new place, apparently it too has no real education. Kids are encouraged to engage in distance learning, but like CEDU/RMA, nobody present is qualified to actually teach anything, let alone provide meaningful therapy. And like CEDU/RMA, the kids are taught "useful life skills" such as how to cook, clean and do construction work. No education that might land them in a good college.
Will Vernard was really laid back, never did anything other than maintenance work, I have no recollection of him ever climbing the ladder, attending raps or propheets. He was a former nuclear engineer on a nuclear submarine, actually had a real college degree and was very intelligent. Too smart to be cajoled in to joining the Kool Aid drinkers I felt. Joe Sweeney on the other hand went from being a local oddity who showed up with his enormous black Clydesdale horse to haul slash and lumber and whatever else around the campus the old fashioned way, who was a self-styled lumberjack and uneducated woodsman, to becoming a full blown staff member, running raps, attending propheets, going on expeditions in to the mountains. I am surprised he never started his own school. He and Richard were very much alike in terms of their backgrounds of being uneducated and experienced at hands-on manual labor. What more qualifications do you need to run a therapeutic school? Or a biomedical facility?
I was there from June 84 to July 86 and have no memory of anyone with a name as strange as Rainbow. Though one guy applied to work there who was a Native American and had the cool name of Black Eagle's Son. But they didn't hire him. Wish they had. He seemed extremely cool.
As for the night watchman. The only night watchman I remember when I was there was a guy around 5' 7", a bit old like 45 to 50, scraggly beard, unkempt appearance. Black hair with a bit of white in it. Very quiet. I think he always wore a dirty baseball cap. He seemed harmless, mostly by virtue of not being all that bright. A local, so he was an Idahoan and was probably born and raised there, living all his life in the area. Don't know for sure, but that's how I took him. That he was influenced by the Neo-Nazis who were and are still influential up there would not be surprising. I remember shortly after I arrived in Idaho, some African-American family moved in to Bonners Ferry. A week later the local cops "found" six foot tall marijuana plants growing on their property. Six feet in a week? They made a deal that no charges would be pressed if the family simply moved to another state. We also had a Chinese-American student at RMA whose parents were told it was fine for him to attend but if they came to visit they needed to go up to Canada to spend time as there might be..."trouble." Because the Chinese bombed Pearl Harbor, and killed Americans in Nam when we invaded them. Or whatever reasons their uneducated minds can concoct.
When you say Jewish kids, we only had one Jewish student at the school when I was there. And you wouldn't know it because he didn't practice, probably because religion was not a part of the program. I know of no student who was ever allowed to go to church. The only religion they wanted us following was theirs.
